BARCELONA, Spain–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Samsung
Electronics America, Inc. today announced at Mobile World Congress
2019 that Sprint is using Samsung’s 5G New Radio (NR) solutions as the
carrier prepares to launch its commercial 5G service.

The new 5G NR solution is enabled by adding Samsung software and a
channel card to Samsung’s existing Massive MIMO technology, which has
been providing enhanced
4G LTE service in U.S. markets on Sprint’s 2.5GHz TDD network since
last year. This allows both 4G LTE and 5G commercial service on Sprint’s
network using the ‘split mode’ capabilities of Samsung’s MIMO solution,
offering a simple, cost-effective transition to 5G. The solution is
capable of achieving more than 1.5Gbps throughput speeds.

Samsung’s 5G NR solution will be in the commercial network for one of
Sprint’s first 5G cities, Chicago, IL, scheduled to launch commercially
in May. Sprint announced their 5G plans today in a press conference at
Mobile World Congress (see press release here).

“Last year, we were proud to deliver enhanced speeds and capacity to
Sprint’s customers through Samsung’s massive MIMO solution,” said Lyle
Nyffeler, Vice President, Networks Division, Samsung Electronics
America. “Today, we are advancing our technology collaboration by taking
this next step with Sprint to deliver commercial 5G NR, and supporting
their 5G strategy through this milestone in Chicago.”

“Our collaboration on massive MIMO has delivered significant LTE
capacity and speed enhancements,” said Scott Santi, SVP of Network
Deployment and Operations at Sprint. “With 5G, we look forward to giving
Sprint customers even greater experiences from gaming and entertainment
services, to IoT and business applications.”

Samsung’s massive MIMO technology plays a key role in Sprint’s 5G
evolution. The solution’s split-mode capabilities use the same radio for
4G LTE and 5G NR, offering simple transitions to 5G without requiring
tower climbs. Additionally, as subscribers purchase 5G phones, excellent
performance quality is retained as 4G capacity transitions to 5G. The
MIMO technology features 64T/64R antenna array, beamforming, and carrier
aggregation, helping operators inject new capacity into networks without
purchasing more spectrum or adding new base stations. The system
includes 128 antenna elements within a compact form factor.

Using Sprint’s 2.5GHz spectrum, Samsung’s 5G solution will drive
hyper-streaming and ultra-fast downloading on 5G smartphones, as well as
enhanced experiences with mobile gaming, mixed reality (AR and VR)
applications and new enterprise use cases.

At Samsung Networks MWC 2019 booth (Hall 2 (2M20)), the company will
showcase its commercial 2.5GHz 64T64R Massive MIMO unit (MMU), as well
as a video of the 5G field testing with Sprint in Chicago, IL. For
further information on Samsung’s Networks solutions visit here.

About Samsung Electronics America, Inc.

Headquartered in Ridgefield Park, N.J., Samsung Electronics America,
Inc. (SEA), is a recognized innovative leader in consumer electronics,
mobile devices and enterprise solutions. A wholly owned subsidiary of
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., SEA is pushing beyond the limits of
today’s technology and providing consumers and organizations with a
portfolio of groundbreaking products in appliances, home entertainment,
Internet of Things, mobile computing, smartphones, virtual reality,
wireless infrastructure and wearables, in addition to offering leading
content and services related to mobile payments, 360-degree VR video,
customer support and more. Samsung is a pioneering leader in smartphones
and HDTVs in the U.S. and one of America’s fastest growing home
appliance brands. To discover more about Samsung, please visit www.samsung.com.
For the latest Samsung news, please visit news.samsung.com/us and follow
us @SamsungNewsUS.

About Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.

Samsung inspires the world and shapes the future with transformative
ideas and technologies. The company is redefining the worlds of TVs,
smartphones, wearable devices, tablets, digital appliances, network
systems, and memory, system LSI, foundry and LED solutions. For the
latest news, please visit the Samsung Newsroom at http://news.samsung.com.